tellthemeerkatsitsfine

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I am very excited about several things right now, and I wanted to write a post going on about it, but I'm so tired from work tonight that instead, I'm just going to post pictures of some things that I've acquired in the last couple of days. Very fucking exciting. Now I have to go to sleep.

(I've just realized that posting this with no context at all might make it look far more impressive than it is - I didn't, like, win the British lottery or anything. I just went into my bank and withdrew British cash to use when I go to Britain a month from now. I'm very excited that I've done that because it means we're just over a month out and it's time to do the logistical things like that. But also I quite enjoy owning a wad of British cash that I can wave around and feel like I won the British lottery.)

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Love it when a guy commits to an idea, and really follows through.

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We have Kitson dates! We have a venue! I've actually slightly surprised myself by how excited I am about this. I mean, we've known for a while that he was doing Edinburgh this year. And I did see him live when I was in London last year, so it's not like it'll be my first time seeing Daniel Kitson perform.

But weirdly, once I was able to actually look at my schedule and look at the Kitson's announcement and see where it fits in, that was the first time it felt entirely real that I'm going to see Daniel Kitson perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival! At The Stand, which for practical purposes is really annoying because it's far from everything else, but I did suspect he'd be at The Stand, and the reason I suspected that is that that's where he usually goes especially if he's doing a messing-around-type show, and that makes it actually pretty exciting to me, for non-practical reasons.

Edinburgh Fringe Festival featuring Daniel Kitson at The Stand! That's the venue of... actually, I'm not going to pretend I don't have a folder on my hard drive of screenshots of all Daniel Kitson's Edinburgh blurbs. Sure I have a folder on my hard drive of screenshots of all Daniel Kitson's old Edinburgh blurbs. Here are all the ones from The Stand.

Dancing - Show he wrote in 2004 to only be performed at that Fringe Festival, separate from his tour show that year. Zaltzman & Oliver's Political Animal was in the same room right afterward; Kitson would sometimes stick around to perform at Political Animal, and in the version of Dancing that's on Bandcamp, John Oliver was in the audience before getting up to Political Animal after. CMG established.

Daniel Kitson's 2005 stand-up show didn't even have its own title, which is very annoying for people who keep their hard drive so meticulously organized as to have an entire sub-folder for old Kitson blurbs. Because these people also have sub-folders for all his shows, and organized by year but labelled by title, and the 2005 one is just untitled. Because on Bandcamp, it's just titled Midnight At The Stand. Which cannot be its proper title, because 1) I know this material was performed in places besides The Stand (there are a lot of bootleg recordings of that) in previews and things, and 2) you can clearly see from the blurb that it started at 11:30 PM.

Honourable Men of Art 2006 - Chocolate Milk Gang show that Kitson created as the anti-Late 'n' Live, when he got tired of compering drunk crowds at the Gilded Balloon, so he took his toys and went to The Stand to do nerdy things like play Scrabble on stage with his CMG friends, and refused to do it on weekends:

It's the Fireworks Talking 2007 - it's amazing how little information is in the blurb, given what an incredibly well-written show it is, that apparently when he wrote the blurb in April he didn't even know whether it would be stand-up or story show:

Honourable Men of Art 2008 - He's lost some friends since 2006 (Russell Howard, John Oliver, Demetri Martin), but back at The Stand:

We Are Gathered Here 2009 - at least the blurb on this one bore a vague similarity to the theme of the actual show:

Where Once Was Wonder 2012 - I think this might be my favourite stand-up show ever, by anyone, in the world:

2014's split month, with A Variety of Things in a Room for the first half and Fuckstorm 3001 for the second half - reunion show with the remaining (straggling) members of the Chocolate Milk Gang, both shows enormous messing-around fun, though I think A Variety of Things in a Room, in particular, is incredibly underrated, as it had so much in it and was so well put together, for a show that was only ever performed like 8 times:

The time in 2016 when he did basically the same thing he'll be doing in 2025, which is a bunch of new/WIP stuff and improvising - you will notice that this is when he switches from the very late starts (those previous blurbs show start times of 11 PM or later, mostly midnight), to oddly early starts, as he'd very nearly turned 40 and decided he didn't want to stay up all night anymore:

Good For Glue 2018 - Daniel Kitson's gotten just over 40 and decided to recapture his roots by making himself and his audience stay up all night again:

Everything Smells of Orange 2019 - A rare middle-of-the-road start time, but this is another show like the one he did in 2016, where he didn't have a finished show but just messed around on stage:

And that is the entire history of Daniel Kitson at The Stand. It's not the entire history of Daniel Kitson in Edinburgh - he's done theatre shows in other venues, mostly the Traverse Theatre and Summerhall. And, fun fact, his first two solo shows were at the Pleasance Courtyard. And even earlier than that, he did that show out of the back of a truck that was in a documentary, and did that Gilded Balloon showcase where he was extremely rude to the audience all month with Andrew Maxwell and Trevor Lock.

But this is, nearly, an history of Daniel Kitson's stand-up in Edinburgh. And that is what didn't fully hit me until I saw the announcement today of his 2025 run (The Stand, 10 AM): I get to partake in history! The specific niche of history that I find obsessively fascinating! Daniel Kitson at The Stand, Edinburgh Fringe!

...I mean, it's not the actual Stand. He's in Stand 3, which is in a building across the road from Stand 1. Stand 1 being the famous club with the cowboy mural from the Stewart Lee TV show and things like that, which was the room that hosted Kitson for most of those previous shows. This year he's in an off-shoot. The same off-shoot room from 2016, when I assume he also booked this late. But still! It's the venue with the history! It's exciting! And it's okay, I am seeing Mark Thomas do a late-night show at Stand 1, so I'll still get into the iconic room and get to see the cowboy mural and feel historic.

Anyway. At the moment, I have my eye on the idea of going to Kitson's show five times. There are five days when his 10 AM show will fit neatly into my schedule, assuming it ends at 11. He hasn't told us yet when we can buy tickets, and I'm hoping it won't be for another four days, as this Friday is my last day of work before summer break, and I'd like to be at home so I can fully participate in the other historic tradition: trying to snap up Kitson tickets the moment they go on sale, before they all sell out.

Fuck, this is cool. Also, did I mention that I only have four work days left until the beginning of September? This is my first year working in a school, and will be my first summer break since I was a teenager. My job is really hard and I am so excited to stop doing it and go to Edinburgh instead.

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I wrote a post last week about how Crybabies have cancelled their Edinburgh, so I need to work out how to fill a primetime slot in my schedule. Since then, Dan Rath has announced a run, in a timeslot that's not too far off from the Crybabies' timeslot, so I figured that's perfect; if Dan Rath had announced earlier, I'd have built the schedule with him in mind.

So never mind about those other options I had in mind for replacing Crybabies - the clown show, the sketch show, the variety show, all my efforts to slightly expand my comedy horizons. I've gone back to the basics: it's one white guy saying jokes into a microphone. Though, if this gives it any cred, it is the lowest-status white man I've ever heard of (and I just spent all weekend re-listening to Steve Hall's old RRR radio appearances).

Or it was meant to be. But annoyingly, Dan Rath doesn't occupy the exact same timeslot as Crybabies, and if I added him onto the day of the Crybabies cancellation, he'd start 20 minutes before the end of the previous show. And of course there's no other day when I could come close to fitting in Dan Rath. I've even tried to see if I could move someone I have scheduled for another day, into the Crybabies' slot, and then Dan Rath could have their slot - it's complicated, I've tried a bunch of things. None of the options would work out.

On nearly every day, at least one person who clashes with Dan Rath's timeslot is someone I absolutely refuse to skip. Like I said, primetime. Grace Jarvis+Mark Watson. Sam Nicoresti+Andrew O’Neill. Josie Long. Alice Fraser. Laura Davis+Chloe Petts. Jessica Fostekew+Guy Williams. David O’Doherty. Look at that list. I can't cut any of that list.

That's who I have in the timeslot on all days but one. That one being the day I had Crybabies booked, and I was seeing Ivor Dembina before, but Dan Rath starts before Ivor ends. I do not need to see Ivor Dembina. I put him on my list because he's got a connection to the history, and it does make me laugh how he can be really really weird, though to be fair, I doubt Dan Rath will leave me thinking, it's too bad no one made me laugh by being super weird tonight. And I did only pay 6 pounds for the Ivor Dembina ticket, so I wouldn't be out a lot of money if I switched him to Dan Rath. Also, Dan Rath ends early enough so that I could add in Elf Lyons or Siblings afterward/before my next show, and still watch the slightly experimental clown or sketch show. But to be honest, I'd grown rather excited about seeing Ivor Dembina. He would be new and odd and exciting.

There was absolutely no need for me to buy all my tickets so early, by the way. Obviously I knew that at the time. Last year I booked way too early, and then moved stuff around later, because I was paranoid that my favourite stuff would sell out. Of course, nothing sold out for ages after I'd booked. This year, I learned and booked my tickets later than last year. But, I'm realizing, still too early. Because it's been over a month since then and nothing's sold out.

I checked today - I browsed through every show at the Fringe. Not every comedy show - every show. I wasn't doing it to check who's sold out; I just wanted to see if there were any good shows that I'd missed in my schedule. But I saw that Mark Watson and Nish Kumar, two of the most famous (mainstream famous and Edinburgh famous) people at the Fringe, haven't sold out a day. Nearly has David O'Doherty, even though he sold out most of his run last year and he's in the same room this year - I guess people just don't buy this early. I'd expected Paul Sinha to sell out fast because he's in a relatively small room, and he's TV famous, and he's probably on his last tour due to health issues, but he's not sold out a day yet. The only people I noticed who've sold out a few days so far are Tim Key (understandable, he's a movie star now), Daniel Sloss, and an oddly medicore comedian named Vittorio Angelone, who must have a big online following, I guess.

Anyway. I did notice that John-Luke Roberts has announced a run, I don't know if that's new or I just missed it before, but fortunately his show starts at 11 AM, so I was able to slot it right into my schedule. I also realized I could fit Rob Auton and Johnny White Really-Really in, because they're on early enough, so that's good. I've significantly upped my overall whimsey quotient.

I know that at this point, the ambition of my schedule is becoming comical. Every day, I become more determined to actually make it to every single show on that schedule, just because it seems like such an Herculean task that it's activating my competitive nature.

And after all that, I still haven't replaced the Crybabies. I think I'll probably end up cutting Ivor Dembina and putting Dan Rath+Elf Lyons into that spot, but I'm still going to wait until Kitson announces his run before I book anything more. Just in the highly unlikely event that Kitson picks a time that fits into that gap. I've still got my fingers crossed for the more likely pick of 10 AM, so it would clash with nothing and I could go multiple times. Anyway, I'm sure I can wait until Kitson's announcement to book my Dan Rath tickets, because if Dan Rath sells out in the time between now and then, then he'll be too high-status to be worth seeing anymore anyway.

This post has been very pointless and irrelevant and niche, even for me. Greg Davies and Lloyd Langford were in the audience at Cowgate. There's a bit of more important information to make this post worth it.

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Times that Ed Gamble has interviewed Chris Ramsey on a podcast (warning for some very 2009 transphobia, though to be fair, they never say whether they think their imagined phone call is being mean to Chris Ramsey, or doing him an helpful favour):

2009

2025

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Conversation with a seven-year-old girl that happened while I was at work today:

Her: Ms. [my name], do you have a son? Me: Nope. Her: Do you have a daughter? Me: Nope. Her: Do you have a husband? Me: Nope. Her: Do you have a boyfriend? Me: Nope. Her: So you’re just on your own? Me: Well no, I have friends… Her: But why don’t you have any family? Is it because all your family have died? Me: No, I have a family. I have a mom and a dad just like you do, I have a brother. Her: Oh… well, are you going to get a boyfriend or a husband? Me: Nope. Her: Why not? Me: …Do your math work.

A couple of things I’d like to note about this conversation:

The seven-year-old girl in question is someone who, last week, saw a rainbow sticker that was on the door for pride month, pointed at it, and said, “That’s bad, rainbows are haram!” I’m pretty sure she does not actually know what gay people are, she’s just Muslim and heard somewhere that rainbows mean something against her religion. Also, she lived in Ethiopia until about seven months ago, so this June is the first time she’s seen a decoration for Pride Month in Canada. I hope, and believe, that someday, she will understand about the beauty and diversity in the world, and that there are many women out there who will never want to have a boyfriend or a husband, and that is not only okay, but cool and fun (I mean, there are lots of women who aren’t gay but still don’t want to date men for a variety of reasons, but in my case, the reason is gayness). I just did not think the time to explain all that to her was in the middle of this specific math block.

This is nearly word-for-word a Kitson routine from 2012. Where his friend’s kid (I’ve always assumed it was Gavin Osborn’s kid, but I’m not sure he specified, it could have been Alun Cochrane or someone else) asked him “Do you have a dog? Do you have a kid? Do you have a wife?”, and after Kitson said no to every question, the kid asked “Well what have you got?”, and both that kid’s parents, overhearing from separate rooms, burst out laughing. But at least Daniel Kitson wasn't trying to teach the kid math at the time.

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Really eclectic mix of the next few things in my working folder of "TV shows I've downloaded and filed in my main comedy hard drive, but haven't actually watched, so I also keep them in this working folder and then delete from here as I finish them":

I've just finished some of the other stuff I was watching, so I'm now going to dive into these four, in some order or other. I've not seen them, mostly. I watched one episode of Guy Mont Spelling Bee a while ago, loved it, didn't get around to watching more (yet). I watched the pilot of Live at the Electric because I read Ian Boldsworth's Patreon post about how they screwed him out of being part of it, and I wanted to see if the show's content lined up with what he claimed (it did). I'm also pretty sure that show in general was quite bad, but the completist in me say I need to watch it all and see if there's anything good, and that particular type of bad TV show seems like a good way to round out familiarity with comedy. I think Nick Helm's on it, and I'm pretty sure he's never done anything badly in his entire life, so at least there's that.

I've also seen a bunch of individual Live From the BBC episodes - John Robins, Josie Long, Liam Williams, Fern Brady, Desiree Burch, Mat Ewins - but I've never sat down and watched them all, which I'd like to do.

And then there's that Monty Python precursor from 1967 that I used to watch bits of with my dad but have also never seen the whole show, and it seems about fifty years overdue to fix that. Like I said, it feels like an eclectic mix. Which one should I start with?

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Here are three posts, in chronological order, that I made in August 2024. And here is a clip from the podcast Robin Ince's Utter Shambles, from May 23, 2008, featuring Barry Cryer in conversation with Robin Ince and Danielle Ward:

I listened to this in the break room at work today, and got unreasonably excited about it, for reasons that I can't be bothered to explain all over again so I just linked my previous posts for context. Basically, it turns out that Andy Zaltzman, Chris Addison, and John Oliver are not the only comedians who are fans of this joke. Barry Cryer's version was slightly different from Andy Zaltzman's version, and certainly more coherently told, but it's basically the same. Very exciting. All the comedians want a head like an orange.

I've just finished that Robin Ince's Shambles podcast, by the way, and it was a lot of fun. Only six episodes, for that specific iteration of their podcast network, a precursor to Robin and Josie's Utter Shambles. When I first came across that podcast, I made a post about it in which I said that even though her name wasn't in the title yet, Josie Long seemed to be a co-host on every episode. Now that I've listened to it all, I see that I was wrong. Josie Long co-hosted the first four episodes - Chris Addison, Robert Newman, Mark Steel, and Stephen Merchant. Danielle Ward co-hosted the last two - Alexei Sayle and Barry Cryer - while Josie was off at MICF. That was a pleasant surprise. Obviously I love hearing Josie Long, but I don't come across Danielle Ward on things as often, and I like her so much that it always feels like a treat when I do.

Anyway, that was a great little collection of interviews, all from 2008, with comedians I find interesting, in a period of comedy history that I find fascinating. I could listen to Robin Ince and Mark Steel talk to each other forever. I could listen to Chris Addison talk about anything, forever. Josie Long and Robin Ince are such an excellent combination, the eagerness and earnestness and curiosity and inability to stop talking. I don't think I'd ever heard Robert Newman talk outside of his stand-up specials (his own stuff, and I once watched a film of a Newman and Baddiel stand-up hour, to see if it was any good, which it wasn't, but of course Newman's solo political shows are very very good) before this, and hearing him unscripted made me like him even more. Obviously it was great fun to listen to Alexei Sayle and Barry Cryer pull out all their old stories from their eras of comedy history. To be honest, the only episode I didn't love was Stephen Merchant's but it wasn't bad.

Anyway, after finishing those I've dived into the Stewart Lee episodes of Book Shambles, and Lee/Long/Ince makes for such a fascinating combination in discussions about comedy history (I mean, it's meant to be a discussion about literature and I'm sure they'll get to that eventually, but I'm 20 minutes in and so far they've mainly talked about comedy history, because that seems to be the main point of overlap in their interests). I really enjoyed his Utter Shambles interview too, about alternative comedy.

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Crybabies have canceled their Edinburgh run. I was booked to see them, even though I've not seen their stuff before, because I've heard they're a very good sketch group, and I want to see interesting thing in Edinburgh beyond just straightforward stand-up. Last year, the sketch group I got onto my schedule was Sheeps - that was much less of a risk, as I was familiar with their sketches and liked them, plus I very much like Liam Williams' other stuff. Crybabies was more of a blind booking, but Sheeps' dates don't overlap with mine this year (arguably they shouldn't have any dates in Edinburgh this year, given that their show last year was about disbanding the group, also it's a Christmas show in August, but I'm still quite disappointed that I won't get a chance to see them), and I needed to get some sketch comedy on my schedule, so they seemed like a good plan.

But now they have cancelled, so I am unexpectedly left with a primetime slot free. 7 PM to 10 PM on August 20, I have nothing booked. When I was first putting this schedule together, I was losing my mind with how there was never enough free space between 7 PM and 10 PM, the most popular timeslots. And now I don't know how to fill one.

I'm going to leave it open until Kitson officially announces his run, in case of the extremely unlikely event that he's performing during that gap. Primetime isn't so much Kitson time - he tends to like being early or late, but these days early far more than late, and I'm hoping he goes for that because I've got 10 AM free every morning. But in case he does choose an evening slot that would fuck up my schedule, here's an easy way I can fit it in.

But I'm assuming Kitson won't end up performing at that time, so what should I put instead? Here are the options I currently have open in various tabs, that fit into the gap:

Tom Cashman: I like that guy quite a bit on Taskmaster. I watched one of his stand-up hours and loved it. I watched another of his stand-up hours and was not quite as excited about it but still enjoyed it. I watched his short set on this year's MICF Gala and it was mostly material from that second stand-up special, which makes me wonder whether that show I've already seen is what he was doing in MICF this year, and presumably also in Edinburgh. So I'm leaning away from him. But I do like that guy.

Siblings: Another sketch group that I know very little about but have heard they're good, to replace the one of those that got lost from my schedule.

This Patti Harrison Variety Night: I'm going to see that at the Soho Theatre in London before I get to Edinburgh, but this will have a different lineup every night so will be worth seeing again, if it's good. Patti Harrison is very funny and can probably bring together a solid group of people who are also very funny.

Elf Lyons: A couple of years ago, while I was really trying to force myself to "get" the clowning/experimental/physical type of comedy that I do not get, I watched her special on NextUp, because I'd heard she was one of the very best at that clowning stuff. I could not, for the life of me, understand why anyone would find that show funny. But I do understand that that genre of comedy is best appreciated in person rather than on a recording - that's true of all comedy, but I think it's far more true of physical comedy than straightforward stand-up. And it's not like I'm likely to get another chance to see Elf Lyons in person. So maybe I should go see her to find out whether I'm able to get into it if I'm physically in the room?

Bronwyn Kuss: Australian lesbian whose show I liked last year, but I didn't like it quite as much as I felt like I should like it, as she does the sort of comedy I like a lot but it just didn't quite connect with me. I wouldn't mind giving her another shot to see if I like it more.

Just letting there be a gap in my schedule so I can go eat some fucking dinner, because my schedule is packed way too tightly as it is.

Oh, I also realized today that I can easily fit Johnny White Really-Really onto my schedule, so I grabbed a ticket for him. That has nothing to do with this as he didn't go into the Crybabies gap, just another spot I had open. But I'm very pleased about that, because that guy is great, and probably worth experiencing in person.

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@lastweeksshirttonight This song came on tonight while I had my music on shuffle, and it made me think of you, and the way it's going to hell in America with you in it (and yet, without your consent). I was going to send it to you in a private message, but then I thought the rest of Tumblr might like to hear this particular song, on this particular weekend, as well.

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Watched the new season of Not Going Out. Enjoyed it. Spoilers ahead.

I love that Lee Mack's single-handedly keeping the traditional sitcom alive. That's how I want it. I don't want anyone else doing it. Those "classic", traditional sitcom tropes have (mostly) died for very good reasons - there were a lot of problems with those things. I'm glad society has largely moved on.

I don't believe that all comedy TV shows should be comedy-drama either. I think there is lots of middle ground, where you can have interesting, creative, subversive, progressive comedy shows that are still focused on being funny first and foremost, with any drama or emotional stuff as a distant side issue. And you can have those alongside the smart, touching, thought-provoking comedy-dramas that have more of a balance, jokes sprinkled into emotional plots and messages. I like that that's mainly the TV comedy landscape these days, rather than the model from 25+ years ago, when it was all about formulaic classic sitcom tropes.

But I'm glad there's one person keeping that latter thing alive (I mean, I'm aware that lots of people are involved in making Not Going Out, but it seems to very much be Lee Mack's vision). Every 18 months or so, we can trot out a new season, a six-episode memorial to a rightfully bygone era. But this version is the one that's done well enough to be worth keeping around.

The show is so loose with continuity and overarching plots. Every character, every set piece, every plot element, is only there as a device to set up more jokes. And yet, the show's been running for so long that even without episodes dedicated to actually fleshing out any of those things, I've seen enough of the main characters to feel invested in them. And I think this whole paragraph is quite an accurate definition of the classic sitcom format.

Lee Mack is the perfect person to keep the traditional sitcom alive. He's staunchly traditional in his comedy style, but he's also actually funny (as opposed to... I mean, I guess I'll avoid naming specific names, but there are definitely some of those older comics who are supposed to be really really good, but if you actually listen to their stuff, you'll realize that they probably only got so successful because stand-up comedy was a smaller thing at the time and there was less competition). His entire career pays homage to the traditional jokesmith style, but he's also willing to keep moving forward, following what comedy has become, and writing new material. His ridiculously quick-moving mind is one of those un-teachable skills that's perfect for this style of comedy. And Lee Mack manages to be old school without being, you know, a dick. To the best of our knowledge, at least. We don't know what he's like in real life, but we do know he's not out there giving interviews about cancel culture to the Daily Mail (cough cough cough Jack Dee).

So I nominate Lee Mack to be the sole ambassador for the old school sitcom in the 2020s. Which is just as well, because the people who have the power of those things had appointed him as that anyway, regardless of my nomination.

There was some wild stuff in this latest Not Going Out season. I enjoy the way that Lee Mack has now established the bones of his sitcom - Lee, Lucy, and their relationship - well enough so he can play with all kinds of different scenarios within that. That campervan episode, what the fuck? Lee Mack writes fanfiction of his own sitcom, horror movie AU. I spent the whole time waiting for it to turn out that Lucy and Lee had comically misunderstood something, Scooby Doo-style, and it would turn out that what seemed like a dangerous threat was actually fine. Like that time in an earlier season, when they thought Hugh Dennis' friend was going to kill them but it was fine. But, nope. This time, Lynn from Alan Partridge was genuinely trying to kill them, and Lee Mack had decided to show us how his characters react in that scenario. And then, in the next episode, act like it never happened. Classic sitcom.

I suppose I should have known, because last season, there was that coffin episode, and I spent the first half of that episode waiting for it to turn out that Lee was actually fine, that due to a madcap series of hijinks, he'd never been buried, and was just locked in a closet or something. But nope, that turned out to be actual horror too. And yet, always true to sitcom style. It's impressive.

That final episode was a masterpiece of a classic farce. I did find it funny when Lee, in the middle of such an amusingly formulaic farce scenario, realizes he's accidentally swapped cell phones with his neighbour. It was such an odd juxtaposition, modern cellphones alongside Pink Panther-esque farce.

I'm down to have this show keep going for another couple of decades or so. Let's follow them (the characters and the actors) to the retirement home.

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A couple of people have asked me about my Edinburgh recommendations for this year. I've posted before about my schedule of shows I'm booked to see (a schedule that's been ever-evolving for a few months now, and I think is probably in something close to its final draft now, by which I mean the only further change I intend to make is to add Kitson in whenever he actually announces dates/times/venue, I am really hoping he does one of his 10 AM shows because then I'll go multiple days, if not I'll have to drop something else for him and rearrange things again), and obviously anything I'm seeing, I'm seeing because I think it'll be good. Mostly. A couple of exceptions, maybe. ACMS might be shit, it was fairly shit on the night I saw it last year, I watched the livestreams that ACMS did of all their 2019 Edinburgh nights and lots of it was shit but some was great, it's a lot easier to accept that ratio when you're watching from the comfort of your own home and can glaze over during the shit parts, than when you're in a Scottish basement at 2 AM and thinking you could be using this time for sleep, but I'm pretty sure Edinburgh is meant to be for seeing things that might be shit but might have bits of gold in them and also they take place in a basement at 2 AM, so I've booked in to see it again this year anyway. And besides, no matter who else is on, I like Thom Tuck quite a lot. And John-Luke Roberts, if he shows up this time. It'll be fun. But it may or may not be good.

Oh, and I've booked to see this American named Alan Resnick because my brother loves him and promised me it'll be worth it and he really really wants me to see this guy. I've looked him up and I'm not convinced he'll be good either. But I'm going to see him.

Besides that stuff, there are a few shows where I know almost nothing about the performer, but just booked because the blurb looked interesting and I'm trying to get myself to take more chances at the festival this year. I hope those will be good, but I don't really have enough evidence to say I think they will. They might be.

I'm not a big fan of Luke McQueen - haven't seen a lot of his stuff, but a few short sets on mixed bills and I've never enjoyed him much - yet I booked to see him in Edinburgh this year because the show blurb was so intriguing that I just had to know what the hell he's talking about in it. And it helped that his show fit perfectly into a gap I had in my schedule. Don't worry, everyone, I don't have gaps in my schedule anymore. I've closed them all, I don't need to eat for nine days.

There's a man named Ivor Dembina. He's 74 years old, and when I try to Google what he's done in the past 15 years, all that comes up is some recent Comedy Unleashed stuff. But in mid-00s, the CMG heyday, he was a major driver of Daniel Kitson's career. He ran the Brixton Hobgoblin night where Kitson would compere and mess around and bring in his CMG friends to do weird stuff, and Kitson would bounce off Ivor Dembina, and it sounded like a lot of fun. I can say that, right? I generally try, on this blog, to skirt around referencing specifics about bootlegs. But I think it's got to be fine to say I've heard quite a few recordings of Daniel Kitson talking shit to Ivor Dembina in 2006. Surely there's some statute of limitations, past which bootlegs stop being illicit and start being important historical preservation. Past 20 years, I think you're in the clear, and this is close enough to 20. Anyway, I've booked to see Ivor Dembina in Edinburgh this summer, because I want to see what he's up to, and I'll hope to God it's not an hour-long rant against immigrants. Kitson did book Ivor Dembina on a mixed bill just a few months ago, so he can't have gone full-on right-wing, probably (Alun Cochrane, for example, stopped appearing on Kitson's mixed bills a few years ago). I'm going to charitably assume the Comedy Unleashed stuff is because it's hard to get booked when you're 74 and a really really weird guy. And he is a weird guy. Every recording of him I've heard, from 2005 to this year, has him being a super weird guy. In a way that makes me laugh hard every time. So I hope that'll be good, in Edinburgh this year. But I'm not, like, sure that it'll be good. Hope springs eternal.

I'm scanning my Edinburgh list now, trying to find things I've booked to see but I'm not sure they'll be good (as in, I have enough faith to take a punt on them myself, but not necessarily to recommend them to others). Here's the relevant spreadsheet, by the way:

The second tab is the one with all the Fringe shows I've booked so far. The first tab has my schedule - the "shareable" version of my schedule, where I've removed the specific addresses of my Air B&Bs, and of the home of my friend in London who's lending me his spare room again. That tab is still a work in progress; I definitely have to add in a trip to Kent at some point, but I'm waiting to find out if/when we could meet with the super cool Britcom historian Oliver Double to schedule that.

Anyway, with the aforementioned caveats, to the several people in the last few weeks who've asked me if I have Edinburgh recommendations, that spreadsheet's a good start. But for this post, I thought I'd make a separate list, called: shows that will be performed in Edinburgh 2025, that I've already seen/heard in one form or another (WIP/preview, or it's a victory lap of a show from last year that I saw before, or something like that), and I liked that show enough to say I highly recommend seeing it in Edinburgh if you can (some of these are shows I'm seeing because they're so good I want to see them again, some I'm not seeing because their dates conflict with mine, some I'm not seeing because I've heard the show before so want to make room for more new-to-me shows, but they're still good):

Amy Annette

Amy Gledhill

Ania Magliano (this is, it's worth noting, a good time to get in on the ground floor with being a fan of hers, as I have a feeling that her fame may shoot upward after this summer, for no particular reason)

Chloe Petts

Guy Williams

John Tothill

Josie Long

Laura Davis

Marjolein Robertson

Mark Watson

Nish Kumar

Olga Koch

Pierre Novellie

Sam Nicoresti

Stevie Martin

Stuart Laws

Tim Key

These are the ones I can recommend reliably, from knowing the actual show and saying it's good, rather than just that I like performer. And that is my overly long (as usual) answer to the FAQ of what I think will be good in Edinburgh this year.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Jesus Fucking Christ, Baynton

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Drove over 2 hours yesterday in a rain storm and horrible traffic, and then two more hours back home, to see Helen Zaltzman, and God, was that ever worth it. She's so great. What an excellent woman. That's what I said to my mother, who came with me to the show, as we left the venue. An excellent woman. My mother agreed.

In a really weird way, this felt like the closest I've come so far to attending, in person, one of those artsy Fringe-y shows from the peak Chocolate Milk Gang era, that I romanticize so much. I've heard stories about Josie Long and Helen Zaltzman doing shows together when they came out of Oxford, where they'd sew live on stage, and other things like that that I believe their people would describe with the word "twee". Twee even by CMG standards, possibly. And I'd love to have seen that kind of thing.

The show I saw last night was in a small intimate venue, with artsy vintage-like decor and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and Helen Zaltzman told stories, accompanied by her husband playing very gentle guitar and singing songs, and a screen behind her with a slideshow to illustrate her words, which looked like it had been put together with MS Paint. The stories were sweet and gently funny and emotional and extremely niche. Fucking perfect.

I don't want to be too patronizing toward that stuff, reducing it to being just cute and artsy. It was also intelligently written, carefully put together, captivatingly performed, and genuinely interesting. It was a lot of stuff about etymology, and then at the end there was a genuinely beautiful and emotional piece about a font, and my mother and I have both worked as editors (by which I mean, my mother has built a decades-long impressive career as a very meticulous and well-respected editor, and for a few years in my late 20s I managed to just barely pay my bills by piecing together freelance editing jobs for a tiny fraction of what she charges), so it was cool to sit next to her as we watched that. My mother and I are two of the only people I know who have typeface and linguistics as an area of nerdy interest.

It was just such a nice show, it felt like it was created with so much care and experience and passion, by someone who's learned how to do this so well over many years, and yet it felt very clear that the woman on that stage in Montreal was the same as the Oxford student who sewed on stage at silly gigs in like 2005, or whenever that was. There was so much attention to detail, the soundscape with the music and sound effects, the silly act-outs, the way themes came together. It was so cool. What an excellent woman.

Tonight, I'm going to a local comedy club with a friend of my friend who lives in London, because he's visiting my city, and I've never met him before but he goes to see stand-up shows with my friend in London, and that friend put us in touch so that I can show him the stand-up scene around here. The comedy club we're going to is... I mean, it's one step up from the other comedy club in the city, which John Hastings once described, on the ComCom podcast, as "the Jongleurs of Canada". The one we're going to is the one that didn't get called the Jongleurs of Canada, it's better than that. But it's not a lot better than that. The comedy I'll see tonight is going to be very different from the show I saw last night, and well below the standards of someone used to London comedy. But a friend of mine is on the bill tonight and she's pretty cool, so at least one act will be good. We'll see how the others go.

I went out to a local comedy night last week - not at one of the clubs, just the open spot pub nights that I tend to like better because at least the atmosphere is fun even if most of the comedy's not great (and to be fair, some of the local comedians are good - but a lot of the more interesting/creative ones don't get booked at the clubs), and a guy there was saying how he recently opened for a comedian who was doing: "More of a one-man show that stand-up. There were, like, musical elements. I think he's trying to put all his routines together so he can sell it to theatres and things. It was pretty weird but all right, I guess." So that's the standard of comedy around here; anything that gets too close to a coherent hour is weird and not really stand-up. Alt-comedy is if you bring up a slightly nerdy subject in your set. Literally not one single person in the local scene has ever made a fabric craft on stage.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Two of the things I did this weekend were listen to Mark Steel's interview by Robin Ince and Josie Long on that 2008 podcast I've been working through (great podcast, by the way, everyone go listen to that snapshot of comedy history), and watch a recent NextUp stream of a mixed bill that features Elliot Steel. And I have to ask, not for the first time and not for the last but the question's particularly strong in my mind right now, how did a guy so cool produce a son who sucks so much?

The really stupid thing is it seems like Elliot Steel has some good ideas. But he chooses to be annoying little Alfie Brown Fin Taylor-y edgelord about it (those are two other wastes of talent/ideas), when with a little more ambition he could have been, like, Milo Edwards. Does that make sense? Probably not.

Also, Elliot, I know lots of comedians make careers off telling exaggerated stories about how working class they are, but you specifically really can't get away with that and need to stop trying to. This should be obvious, but it doesn't work if everyone knows who your dad is. You got the nepo baby advantages, the trade-off is you can't tell stories about being unable to relate to a middle class girlfriend.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I've just had an email from a teacher who works with me, asking what I think of the comments she wrote on the report card for a kid I work with a lot. And I'll have to explain to her that I won't have time to look those over after work tomorrow, because I have to borrow my parents' car and drive to Montreal [2 hours away] to see my third-favourite comedian's sister perform a show about linguistics. Note that she is the sister of my third-favourite comedian, not my third-favourite among all sisters of a comedian. I assume that's exactly the sort of linguistic play that we'll get from her performance. Anyway, I'll have a look at the report card on Tuesday.

That was a roundabout way of saying: Helen Zaltzman tomorrow! I'm super excited!

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Emma Sidi was such a good guest on the Taskmaster podcast, I want her on every episode. Maybe on every episode of everything. She reminds me a bit of Lucy Beaumont in a weird way, in that they’re both comedians who will say things as though they make perfect sense, and insist that this was a reasonable thing to say, even though it’s way out of line from reality. But with Lucy it’s so over-the-top that it has to be a character, at least a bit, and if it’s not a character (which I’ve come to believe it might not be), then it becomes almost uncomfortably hard to laugh at. Emma Sidi, however, hits this perfect balance where she sounds like a regular person but a little to the left (in terms of rationality, not politics, though the politics in her government-based Edinburgh hour last year were solid).

This makes everything she says funny, when she says it in that persona. It’s probably the advantage of spending so many years as a character comedian, that she can strike exactly the right note even when she’s not “in character”. Though honestly I’m not fully convinced it is a character. It’s possible that she just actually is a regular person but a little to the left. And it’s great.

I loved her individually praising every contestant on this season, except Jason, leaving him out for no obvious reason. Very funny. And I agree with her – except about Jason, of course. I wasn’t sure about Fatiha for the first few episodes of this season, or, to be honest, for the pre-Taskmaster stuff I’ve seen by her either. But she’s really won me over in the latest episodes, I now find myself looking forward to seeing her task attempts. And particularly her studio stuff.

Rosie Ramsey’s the one about whom I was least excited, but I’ve warmed to her too. She’s a nice foil for some of the most chaotic elements in this season, and it says something about the standard of chaos in a season where the foil is someone who’s faked a projectile vomit on camera for no reason whatsoever. She’s the only contestant on this season who isn’t a comedian (I guess Baynton also hasn’t done stand-up or anything, but he’s a comic actor and I think he’s been a writer on a bunch of those comedy shows), and there is sometimes a little bit of a sense of her being… you know that thing everyone says about the Olympics, that it would be cool if one regular person had to compete in the events alongside the trained athletes? It sometimes feels a bit like Rosie Ramsey is that on Taskmaster, and I’ve just spent several minutes trying to work out a less cruel-sounding way to word that comment, but I can’t think of one. Because I don’t mean it to sound nearly as insulting as it does; it’s ended up being quite fun to watch her work her way through things as someone who just got sort of dropped into this. She made me laugh several times in the latest episode.

Those were the two contestants I’d been unsure about previously, but I’m on board with them now, and I stand by view that Stevie Martin, Mathew Baynton, and Jason Mantzoukas are all top-tier additions to Taskmaster canon. And it was great fun to listen to Emma Sidi pick all of them apart in her offbeat-but-almost-reasonable way, pointing out why they’re all perfect. Except, according to her, Jason.

As a side note about this latest podcast episode, I also found it funny to listen to Ed be so scandalized by the amount of sadism in the teaching task. He's going soft in his old age, because I know that as far as comedy sadism goes, Ed Gamble has seen far worse than that.